Unfortunately, e-waste doesn’t make for very interesting dinner conversation. I wanted to change that.

All I needed was access to a lifetime of electronic waste.

Lying on a lifetime worth of electronic waste.

At SXSW in 2017, I learned that Dell had the world’s largest global recycling program. They were hosting a series of impact-focused sessions to talk about how artists and individuals were collaborating with them to help reduce waste and encourage recycling.

As someone dedicated to collaborating with responsible corporations having a positive social impact, I was immediately interested to learn more.

I chased down Sarah Gilliam from their Corporate Social Responsibility team in search for more information. She explained to me how they offer free e-waste recycling in almost 80 different countries, but that their biggest challenge was getting more people to recycle.

After all, how do you convince people that recycling e-waste can be cool?

Perhaps the first step was to show how past electronics had the potential to power future devices.

Dell found a way, called the “Closed Loop Recycling Process“, where they developed the ability to salvage plastics and gold from old electronics to be recycled into new computer parts – essentially using the past to power the future. I decided to use that as a starting point.

Our structures were built with simple tools, paint and wood.

Our volunteers would help to either cut, paint, sort or screw in pieces of electronic waste. One of the most tedious structures to build was our portal, where each arch would take up to 6 hours to decorate with valuable circuit boards.

The largest arches took up to 6 hours of tedious bending and screwing.

The structures were built to work from only one angle

With limited time and budget, David Jeter – our master builder – decided to use forced perspective to make our structures look far longer and deeper than they actually were. From the sides, you can see how incomplete the structure actually is.

We clamped flashes all over our structures to try and highlight the arches.

Lighting was improvised using flashes that I brought, along with whatever flashes, clamps and stands the volunteers brought. We placed the most powerful flash we had, a Broncolor Move with an orange gel, bouncing off the back of the white wall as our main flash.

Bodypainting and makeup took over 8 hours in the unheated warehouse

With a leaf blower borrowed from Home Depot, we were able to add movement to the image.

Our smallest volunteer, Tricia, was able to hide from the camera by crouching down low behind Clara.

It turns out electric leafblowers are really great at blowing hair around.

The final detail, was to tape a flash onto a volunteer’s drone to get the light into the perfect position

Although we had never tried to fly a drone with a payload before, Mital, one of the volunteers encouraged us to give it a shot anyways. Adam, our videographer, was the only one of us confident enough to give it a shot.

Our sets lasted only one day before being put back into Dell’s recycling machine.

It took only 4 hours to clean up 10 days of hard work – but the images will hopefully live on forever and empower every individual to tell their friends and family to Rethink electronic waste, Recycle them responsibly, so that responsible companies like Dell can Revive them as brand new computer parts.

Please help us spread the word. Your voice can make the difference!

(If you want to purchase these prints AT COST you can pick them up here: https://www.vonwong.com/Store/E-Waste-Posters)

#RethinkRecycleRevive

PS. We’re giving away postcards to those that donate their electronic waste. (ENDED)